“What’s next? Are you going to tie her up and pick out safe words or what?”
I smile. “No. There’s no word on earth that will make anyone safe from me.”
“Haha. I’m glad your boyfriend is enjoying himself,” Pandora tells Melanie, pronouncing the word “boyfriend” like one would pronounce the word “excrement.” She returns her attention to me. “We’re very protective of our Mel. She believed in Santa much, much longer than the rest of us. So tell us about yourself. You’re like some Gatsby guy, with lots of money, but a very mysterious past. Kyle and I Googled you but couldn’t find much. What are your intentions with our girl?”
“Pandora!” Melanie kicks the back of Pandora’s seat. “Ignore my friend, Greyson,” she tells me.
But the friend doesn’t feel like ignoring me. She keeps peering past her shoulder at me. “Are you glad Melanie didn’t catch the bouquet?”
“Why would he be?” Mel counters.
“Dude, judging by that bling, the man has no intention of marrying. Just fucking.”
“Pandora!”
I laugh; I find it highly entertaining how protective this girl is. There’s no doubt in my mind some fucking loser made her like this.
She shifts in the front passenger seat so she can fully face me. “Do you have a wife?” she persists.
“What?”
“Are you married? Are you gay? What’s wrong with you?”
Well, let’s see now. Currently, she’s what’s wrong here. I could stare her down easy, but why stare at this Bitter Betty when I have princess beside me?
“Pandora, you’re totally ruining my evening!” Melanie kicks the back of her seat again then shifts over to face me. She looks delicious, all in red. I feel like the Big Bad Wolf, staring hungrily at those kiss-me lips and those highly dangerous, innocent green eyes. “Is she right? Are you playing with me?” she asks me curiously.
I don’t know what it is about her, but the way she looks at me makes my cock start thickening. It’s my natural response to her. I can probably help it as much as I could help killing for her last night, which is not at all. No matter how much in control, you can’t command your instincts. Sometimes they command you.
I’ve only ever killed for one other person in my life.
The difference is, I felt no remorse last night. I wouldn’t change what I did for Melanie last night. I’d do it all over again, kill the first three just as fast, torture the fourth one just as slow. Hell, even slower if I could’ve prolonged it. In fact now, the reminder of her soft, helpless cries under the hood twist a knife of fury in my chest.
One hand curling around her waist, I drag her closer to me and whisper in her ear, “I’m not playing with you.”
Christ.
I’m being serious here.
As serious as I’ve been about anything in my life.
“Be honest,” she whispers back.
“I’m not playing with you,” I repeat.
We’re being watched from the front of the car, so fuck that. In one move, I pull her over to sit on my thigh and lower my head to her. She smells so fucking sweet and juicy I want to bury my nose and find the source of her scent. I rub my nose along the back of her ear, turned on by her nearness, her shape, her smell, her.
She trembles, and my muscles pull taut in response.
What are you doing to me, my sweet, lovely number five?
I reach out with my thumbs and force her eyelids to close so she won’t see me. So she won’t stare right at me with those fucking green eyes that scream save and keep and do me, and I whisper in a voice roughened with lust, “When I’m not with you, I think about the next time every inch of you will belong to me. I play games and I play them hard and I play them dirty, but if you’re a game, princess, then you’re the first fucking game that’s ever played back with me.”
She opens her eyes. Those fucking DO me, LOVE me eyes.
Her friend Pandora is quiet now, and the car crackles with Melanie’s pull to me, and mine to her.
Hell, I’ve played nice with the friends for a while now, but I don’t do nice for long. It’s just not in me.
I rap the roof of the car. “Drop us off here.”
“Here? It’s the middle of nowhere.”
“I insist.”
With a dramatic sigh, he pulls over at the curb next to an empty lot across from a dark apartment building complex. I help Melanie out, then I grab the roof of the car with my good arm and lean in to tell Pandora, “Happy her friends are genuinely concerned for her. I’m not perfect, but on my word, no one will hurt her when she’s with me.”
She shoots me a quiet glare and her friends drive off.
“She hates men, don’t worry about her.” Apparently trying to soothe me, Melanie grins up at me and brushes a hand over the flat of my shirt.
I take her wrist in my hand, the move instinctive, to keep people at a distance. “Cheerful is the last of my worries. You hungry?” I squeeze her wrist and notice how sleek and small it is in the circle of my fingers, then I realize she’s the only thing I allow myself to touch without a glove. And she feels good. Real. Warm. How can something so fucking vulnerable have a pull so strong on me? I want to run my hand beneath the jacket and touch all of her, her collar, up her throat and upward, so I can cup that sweet, vibrant face in my hand and squeeze it and kiss the shit out of it. My voice roughens when I whisper, “Don’t eat that lip, I’ll take you somewhere.”